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A woman identified as Lizandra Blanco Saucedo was sent to provisional prison in Sancti Spíritus after being reported for alleged severe and repeated physical abuse against her three minor children, aged between three and eight years old.
The case has once again put the actions of the authorities and the slow response of the judicial system regarding serious allegations involving minors at the center of the debate.
According to posts shared on Facebook by activist Irma Broek on Monday, "the mother who mistreated her children, and who was supposed to be released on bail today, has finally been detained until the trial following a change in precautionary measures."
This change was not automatic nor the result of effective preventive action, but rather a direct consequence of the public pressure generated on social media and the viral nature of the case. This information was confirmed to him by the father of one of the minors involved.
Broek celebrated the change in measure and stated that now the hope is that the court grants custody to the paternal environment.
He also emphasized that citizen mobilization was key: "Once again, we demonstrated that unity is strength and that complaints do work," he noted.
However, the very development of events reveals a deeper problem: the apparent initial passivity of the institutions. According to reports, the woman could have been granted provisional release on bail if there hadn’t been strong social pressure on the Internet, rather than due to proper action taken by the authorities.
The day before, Broek had published another report detailing episodes of violence and negligence towards minors, as well as pointing out the lack of effective response from the police and other local institutions.
In that text, it even warned of the risk that the suspect could be released, alerting to possible consequences for the minors involved.
"Allegedly, the woman uses these aggressions as a method of blackmail against the child's father, who currently resides in Mexico, trying to force him to resume the relationship after their separation. No child should be used as a hostage or suffer violence," she stated.
The father of one of the victims speaks out
The father of the three-year-old boy who appears in the photos with dấu tích of bruises, along with another girl, is in Mexico.
The father of the eldest girl (just eight years old) is in Trinidad and Tobago, and from there he wrote to activist Irma Broek to clarify the situation of the three minors.
"My daughter suffers from physical abuse and serious neglect: her mother sends her to school without a snack and leaves her without food at home. My mother (the child's grandmother) is the one who has to bring her food daily, both to school and at home, under constant threats that she won't be allowed to see her if she doesn't meet her demands," she detailed.
The man reported that Lizandra was preventing him from seeing his daughter on special dates and celebrations.
"A person capable of such a level of violence represents an imminent danger to the three children. If they are released and see these reports, I fear they will pose a threat to the physical safety of my daughter or the other minors," she alerted.
The complainant accused the police in Sancti Spíritus of not acting with the necessary rigor in this case, and emphasized that the school, which is aware of the situation, has also not made a statement.
For this reason, he demanded immediate preventive detention for Lizandra pending trial and that her parental rights over her children be revoked.
The children, victims of their mother and the system
Beyond the specific case, what becomes evident is a troubling pattern: the institutional response appears to depend more on media noise than on a steadfast and diligent preventive action.
That a person identified in a complaint of such severity could have been released on provisional bail until the case gained public attention raises serious doubts about the effectiveness of the child protection system and the responsibility of the State in responding promptly to potential situations of violence.
In this context, social media serves as a mechanism of pressure and visibility, but also as a symptom of a larger problem: when justice is only pursued vigorously after public exposure, it undermines trust in institutions and leaves minors in a situation of avoidable vulnerability.
The case was on the verge of being resolved with a bail of 50,000 pesos: the local page Revolico Sancti Spíritus had warned on Sunday that the accused would be released on Monday while awaiting trial, which sparked a wave of outrage on social media that ultimately influenced the judicial decision.
The precautionary measure imposed is the most severe one provided for in the Cuban Criminal Procedure Law, which the regime applies without hesitation to those who protest against the government.
This case follows the steps of the baby Kosún González Pedroso in Camagüey, a 10-month-old child who was locked in a dark room for three months suffering from burns and severe malnutrition, whose mother was also arrested in March following coordinated pressure from social media by the same Rodríguez Sánchez.
In July 2025, a mother and her partner were charged with homicide following the death of two-year-old Roberto Carlos Suárez Machado in Matanzas, a victim of systematic abuse.
That same year, the regime approved a new Code for Children that explicitly prohibits violence against minors, although the cases of child abuse in Cuba continue to accumulate, highlighting the gap between the legal text and its actual implementation.
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